ldt1

I'd like to rejuvenate my one 86's stock phone dials. would it be better to either re-paint, or, polish them? The paint on them is really faded, but there aren't any major nicks or curb rash. I would like to keep this car fairly close to stock, appearance wise. The car needs a paint job, and I would rather spend money on this than new wheels. I would really apreciate any pics of any refurbished phone dials. My other 86 has chromed momo wheels, which are a bit dated looking, but fairly cool, IMO.

awilson40

If you take a bit of time in prep work, Duplicolor silver wheel paint does a very good job.
I did mine last spring and they look great.
I did 2 wheels on at a time and had it all done in a week end.

faithless

Polished won't look very stock if that is your aim. Polished is probably a bitch to keep looking polished. Whatever paint you use, dont use cheap stuff. The brake dust will just tear apart crappy paint.

NZ951

I say powder coat...

ivai

I've seen some polished phone dials, looks extremely sharp.. it varies with the color of the car though.. have any pics? Perhaps someone on the forum (with enough skill) would be kind enough to photoshop a photo of ur wheels to either repaint them or polish them.

Also, I recommend this article if you do polish them. http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarti...s_corner-4.htm

KLR

There are many threads on painting phone dials. Below are pics of mine about 4k miles after repainting with wurth's. This was quite a bit of work, though, and I found that to get a good finish (particularly in the valve stem area), I needed to have the tires dismounted. With paint, it was about $140 including dismounting and remounting/balancing. I don't know how many hours it took (including schlepping the wheels around), but it was a lot.

I don't know what goes into polishing a set, but you can search for pics of the final result, they've been posted. If your tires are nearly shot, you might be best served by swapping your phonies for a set of phonies, 16" 968, or Design 90 wheels that are in decent shape and have good tires on them. You might end up being out (net) only about $300 for what amounts to newly refinished wheels and nearly new tires.

Peckster

I did mine wiuth the tires mounted but no air a couple of years ago, they still look good.

Never seen polished ones, that route sounds like more work than I'd care to expend.

I prefer stock anyway.

Jason_86_951

I'm with Andrew on this one, mine aren't powder coated but I think I'm going to do that this spring in white. I used Duplicolor's wheel paint.

Got Me a Porsha

I just refinished a second set of phone dials using the base/clear process. The color is a custom silver I call "Cipra Silver". It is very deep, and incredibly brilliant in the sunlight.

josephsc

I like whities -- I did mine last year with paint, but mine didn't come out too well (I'm a bad painter...) I'm thinking about redoing them with powdercoat this winter.

dme

What do you do about smoothing out rash and 'minor' imperfections. Do you sand them down? What kind of process do you go through. After looking for a set of Phone Dials, I now have two sets. One set is going on the car, and I thought I might do some restoration on the rough set.

tifosiman

White phonedials, ala the Turbo Cup series cars, rule!

My car with the white phones on it in action:

Alpine951

Here is what i did. Just need to finish the rest of them

Marks951

Local body shops will know where to get wheels refinished. I took mine to TURBAX and had them refinished. They turned out great. They can also fix any gouges or scrapes too. All four of mine with old tires being replaced in the process with new ones and balanced was around $400. Stripping them and polishing them isn't fun and requires constant upkeep. Besides, the funky angles on phonedial wheels doesn't look good when polished...they just look dirty.

black944 turbo

I am trying to redo mine again. Not turning out to great. To cold. Oh well I want to see what others have done all look realy nice.